Summary

In Chapter 29, "Penelope", we learn from Penelope that Odysseus has travelled to the underworld. At first she believed this meant her husband had died, but apparently not. He sailed to the land of the dead because Circe told him a "consultation was necessary" (227). This particular consultation was with "the dead seer" Tiresias (228). Instead of returning home, as most of the Greeks have by now done, Odysseus found himself "pouring sacrificial blood into a trench to lure the spirits up from Erebos". The first spirit Odysseus saw was his old comrade Elpenor who died on Aeaea: "He had drunk too much wine, climbed onto the roof of Circe’s palace, and thence fallen to his death" (228). Elpenor made Odysseus promise to return to Aeaea to bury his body properly. Odysseus also met his mother Anticleia who "died from a broken heart" waiting for him...